Yale isn’t hard to get into? It doesn’t admit by major, so applying for History (one of its strongest departments) or CS doesn’t matter.
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The prior year Yale took 7 kids out of the 140 in the class. Mostly unhooked. And maybe the top 15 kids in the school applied my son’s year to Yale EA. The val was relieved my son wasn’t applying EA to Yale. Because he figured that is one competition he didn’t want. Eventually only 3 kids got into Yale that year. Princeton took 6. Only my son was unhooked that year.
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My daughter has a friend with a parent whose family are members of an almost extinct Native American tribe (I don’t know which one). Several T20 schools contacted her and her siblings when they were in the college application process and invited them to apply with special applications. All three go to elite, single digit acceptance rate colleges, despite just being average students.
My son in law is also part Native American (with proof of lineage to his tribe). He jokes that it got him into college, but his younger brother wasn’t as lucky (he was waitlisted at the same college).
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I agree wholeheartedly that this is happening. A lot of “regular” excellent students are just out there living their lives and not thinking too much about colleges until late in their junior year. They are not going to feeder schools with school counselors who call AO’s or help them cultivate balanced lists.
And like blossom noted, they are not necessarily among the highly stressed kids because they don’t even know what is required for top schools. They either toss their hat in anyway at application time and likely get rejected, or decide the Top 20 schools are not for them.
I do think there is a bit of a trickle down effect where they discover, to their surprise and dismay, that they may even struggle to get admitted to their own state flagship. But a lot of these kids aren’t figuring that out until it is too late to craft ECs, etc., in a calculating way.
My concern is whether this is altering the student body of top schools in an undesirable way. What if holistic review results in admitting only alpha-type leaders, plus students with the resources and privilege to craft an ideal profile starting in grade 8, plus a few students with “hooks” that satisfy institutional goals?
That is certainly a school’s prerogative. And I don’t doubt that the non-admitted average excellent students will succeed at other schools and in life.
But I can see pitfalls:
- Like students posting on reddit and elsewhere that they are stressed and depressed, hate their major and school, but feel so much pressure to maintain appearances and get the prestigious degree. They have been on the hamster wheel of achievement so long, they never even had time to reflect whether they were still/ever genuinely interested in whatever (usually STEM) field they are now pursuing.
- Like “leaders” who are so competitive they are willing to sabotage their peers to get an edge. Rumors have circulated at my child’s high school about someone’s sibling at a prestigious school with “weed-out” intro courses who was intentionally given the wrong time for the final by a peer. Whether true or not, if students think these types of incidents could be true and that the school fosters an environment where people think like that, it erodes trust, collegiality, and collaboration. So do stories of students who lied on their applications to get in.
- Like a student body that lacks the desired diversity of viewpoints because it skews heavily toward upper-class students who understood the admissions system. It is only “balanced” by a smattering of low-income and first-generation students who are scrambling to survive in an unfamiliar environment that everyone else seems to already know how to navigate. The middle class kids from generic public schools and the talented and interesting B students from everywhere are largely absent, together with their viewpoints.
I don’t feel sorry for the students who don’t get into these schools. But I do wonder if the intellectual output and effectiveness of the institutions will actually suffer over time. There is already a distrust among a large part of the populace regarding institutions of higher learning, particularly elite ones. At best, these people think colleges are filled with out-of-touch snobs and, at worst, they think schools indoctrinate and brainwash students to believe lies.
When the day comes that the average person doesn’t know anyone personally who ever attended a top research university or LAC, does that make average people less likely to accept the research and views coming out of those institutions? If the institutions are filled with unicorns sharing exciting ideas by shorthand, is there an inability to translate them in a way everyone not admitted to the club can appreciate and use?
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All this sounds true. But I am not sure if this is really true. Let me explain …
I think at our high school, you could say that kids are ambitious. But I am not sure they are competitive. Certainly there is very little or no cut-throatness. Kids are very helpful with each other. Maybe because you are not competing with the next person to get into the college of your choice. Both of you can get in. The “pool” is not really your school. This is deeply felt. The pool, in this case, is either “NJ Private Schools”, or at best “Northern NJ Private Schools”. So there is no direct one-on-one competition.
And once you get into college, at a “top” private college, kids are incredibly collaborative. I have heard different things at UCB for instance. And I can’t speak for other other “top” colleges. But at the one my son is at, there is zero cutthroatness. My son coached two of his roommates for an internship at the same company that he is going to, and referred another roommate and a HS classmate to a company he interned with the prior summer. They all reciprocate. Nobody is insecure.
Now we went to an admitted student event at Rutgers, and the tour guide was very positive about the school, and that is very nice. I asked him what is one thing that is negative about Rutgers. Before he could think, he just blurted out and said it is cutthroat. And then he spent 5 minutes trying to explain it. This has me worried about Rutgers :-). We need to do more research. It is our state flagship. Can’t ignore it.
You live in a bubble, that is not normal in realistically 99% of High Schools in America for 7 out of a class of 140 getting in to Yale
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I don’t disagree. I was just explaining the decision about thinking that Yale may be an add on. We (my wife and I ) did make fun of my son and told him that he is in a bubble. Adding Yale on a panic is not because we thought Yale was easier than Harvard or even UIUC. Just that it is random, and you wanted to increase the chance of getting lucky. And if Yale wanted to express a mild preference to strengthen their CS intake, he is sufficiently qualified both in that specific area, and more broadly as well. There is some thought that went into that. We don’t get 7 Yales every year. But the 7 influenced perceptions (incorrectly) on ease or difficulty of getting in the following year – the year my son was applying in. Yale hovers around 3-4. Some of those 3-4 tend to be hooked.
99% of schools don’t have 1 kid getting into Yale.
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Exactly. I’m not even quite tracking with the explanation. Feels tone-deaf.
Since there seems to be some criticism of kids applying to 20, I am explaining how that comes about. Eventually only 7 schools were applied to (from which 3 were withdrawn) because the list of 20 was supposed to span two stages. I am not sure why that is being tone deaf. If something is being brushed aside as being tone deaf, it means there was no interest in the answer in the first place. I answered with a list because @Mwfan1921 asked me above…
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Let’s move on
I do think that posters claiming kids are not stressed these days either live in a very insular community, or don’t really know the kids and their parents well enough for them to be candid. Both my kids were stressed. They never would have told acquaintances, and appeared calm. I think it is referenced as Stanford duck syndrome, portraying calmness on the surface while paddling underneath like crazy.
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Compounding the stress is that in several of our largest states, excellent students can no longer consider their state flagship as a safety, or even a target in many cases. Those schools once were academic and financial safeties for outstanding students in Texas, California, Virginia.
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Texas still lets in the top 7% doesn’t it? You can’t get your major though …
Top 6%. Those in excellent school systems, private schools, or selective magnet schools, can be exceptional students but not in the top 6%. Every year kids get into MIT and Harvard but not UT from our local public school.
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I’m not claiming that nobody is stressed. I’m pointing out that there are plenty of kids who are not stressed (perhaps the stressed out folks are the ones living in insular communities where if you don’t get into Stanford for CS and get a 300K job in SV four years later your life is over). There are enough colleges who do not practice holistic admissions (grades, scores, no criminal record, a complete transcript and you’re in) so that for a pretty large cohort of HS kids being stressed is a choice, not the default.
And I’m also pointing out how much of this stress is self-imposed. There is no proof that “just one more” AP class will push you over the bar to get into Princeton; there is no proof that existing on four hours of sleep so you can find time to run your non-profit which tries to eliminate gender disparities in the workforce in Haiti is the golden ticket. These are choices that people make. And presumably, logging on to websites like this is to learn how other parts of the country handle college admissions- and sometimes, it’s very different from your own.
If I had a kid who did half of what some of the kids on CC claim they are doing (and the attendant stress, anxiety, self-loathing) I’d be putting everyone into family therapy. I am not a perfect parent; I was not a perfect parent. But I cannot imagine a scenario where I allowed my kids to sacrifice their health (physical, mental, spiritual) on the altar of college admissions.
YMMV. But if you see endemic stress all around you- guess what- you can be the lever of change.
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That’s tragic
Just the way it is. In fact, the very selective STEM academy was kicked out of its high school because those STEM kids, drawn from the entire district, were taking up all the top 6% spots, and no one frrom the regular high school that hosted the program qualified.
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You had the enormous advantage of growing up in a time of expanding economic opportunity. Today’s kids often feel the middle class is shrinking, the cost of school is skyrocketing, and the future is far from guaranteed to be better. So assurances that it will all work out seem tone-deaf to many.
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I think as you mention costs are skyrocketing, if I am full pay, and am expected to pay 75k+, I would be exceptionally picky about where I’d go. There is nothing loosey goosey about it. And it is about how you are spending 4 years of your life, the quality of the program etc… People are very careful. I pour over the curriculum, talk to other kids and adults that know the place etc. It is not some handwaving, oh you can’t complain if you can get into some generic school in this bucket etc …
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